Cutting Through the 'Bull'

By

Bruce Bennett

Updated Nov. 2, 2010 12:01 a.m. ET

Thelma Schoonmaker recently recalled a pivotal moment in the gestation of Martin Scorsese's 1980 magnum opus "Raging Bull"—one that brought with it a wonder bordering on astonishment, if not dissociation. With principal photography completed and an initial footage assembly in place, the director and his editor sat down to survey what they had already accomplished and what lay ahead in the cutting room.

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Thelma Schoonmaker with Martin Scorsese (center) and director Michael Wadleigh on the set of the latter's 1970 documentary 'Woodstock.'
Everett Collection

"Marty and I looked at the first rough cut we had done, and it was so strong," Ms. Schoonmaker said over the phone from Britain, where she and Mr. Scorsese are currently working on their 17th collaboration, a 3-D film called "Hugo Cabret." "We just came out and we said, 'My god. Who did that?' Even from the beginning, it was just burned into the screen. I don't know—there was something about it that was just ... special."

As the shock wore off, Ms. Schoonmaker—who would go on to win the first of her three Academy Awards for her work on "Raging Bull"—and her director found themselves emboldened. "We decided to rip out a lot of flashbacks of De Niro in the nightclub," she said. "It was so strong that we didn't need them."

Strong enough that 30 years later the film is regarded as a pinnacle of the form, even if it failed to earn Oscars for Mr. Scorsese in the Best Director and Best Film categories. Beginning Friday, Film Forum will celebrate the 30th anniversary of "Raging Bull" with a one-week screening engagement and a new print struck for the occasion.

"I just couldn't believe that Scorsese didn't get best director and that picture didn't get best picture," Ms. Schoonmaker said. But a recent viewing put a longheld incredulity shared by many of the film's admirers into perspective. "It's just too strong, too unusual, too deeply upsetting," she said. "I don't think they would vote for it today, frankly."

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Robert De Niro as Jake La Motta in 'Raging Bull.' Film Forum is celebrating the film's 30th anniversary with screenings beginning Friday.
Everett Collection

"Raging Bull" benefited from a kind of coincidental creative leeway during principal photography. At the time, United Artists's brain trust was deep in the expensive debacle of Michael Cimino's Western "Heaven's Gate." Nevertheless, as the film neared completion, Ms. Schoonmaker recalled, "the studio was very nervous about 'Raging Bull.'" So much so that she and Mr. Scorsese subsequently discovered that United Artists had already sent out feelers to other distributors about sacrificing the Scorsese film to their balance sheet.

"According to ["Raging Bull" producer] Irwin Winkler," Ms. Schoonmaker said, "they were trying to sell it off. [Mr. Winkler] didn't tell us until five years afterwards. He kept it to himself because he knew it would be terrible for us to hear that. That's a great producer."

The anxieties of clay-footed executives notwithstanding, Ms. Schoonmaker offered that the creation of Mr. Scorsese's bruising and transcendent film defies a detailed accounting. "You can't really describe how it's done in a way," she said. "It's just got a power of its own. From the minute I started working on it, I could feel that. I said in my Oscar speech that it was pure gold in my hands. It was. Every single frame of it was that way. It was like putting together the best jigsaw puzzle you've ever seen in your life. I can't tell you, it was just heaven."

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Thelma Schoonmaker, above, has served as Martin Scorsese's film editor for more than 30 years.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Though Ms. Schoonmaker, grew up primarily on the isle of Aruba, a place she described (echoing the sentiments of many longtime Manhattanites about their own home) as "now a big tourist island," her Big Apple bone fides are clear.

"My family goes way back in New York," she said. "So I am a New Yorker, I feel like a New Yorker, it's in my bones."

She credits her arrival here in the late 1960s with starting her on what has proved to be an illustrious career path. "It was a very, very rich time where everything was exploding—poetry, filmmaking, music," she said. "The world was our oyster and there were jobs everywhere at all kinds of creative places. We didn't have to struggle to get in the way people do today. I just happened to see an ad saying 'willing to train an assistant editor,' and I learned enough from that to go to NYU for just one summer course. That's all that I could afford."

Though they would not work together in earnest until "Raging Bull," when Mr. Scorsese was able to arrange for Ms. Schoonmaker's membership in the West Coast editing guild, her creative fate was sealed when the two worked on a student project together at NYU. "I met Marty and that changed my life forever," she said. "It was sheer luck."

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